Registration opens mid-March
Meet the poets giving talks and workshops at the 2025 Terroir Creative Writing Festival. Registration for the Saturday, May 3, event opens Mid-March.
MIKE CHASAR, POETRY
Mike Chasar has taught literature and creative writing at Willamette University since 2009. A 2016 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, he is the author of two monographs from Columbia University Press and has published poetry and essays in journals such as Poetry, Poets and Writers, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. my.willamette.edu/people/mchasar
WORKSHOP: The Art of Writing Ekphrastic Poetry
This workshop will offer a step-by-step guide to the art of ekphrasis—a mode of poetry writing anchored in describing and engaging with paintings and other works of visual art. Participants will encounter some of the inspirational possibilities of writing about visual art, explore strategies for generating new material, and lay the foundation for their own ekphrastic poems via a hands-on workshop focusing on the power of lyrical description, point of view, and various storytelling strategies.
CHRISTOPHER LUNA, POETRY
Christopher Luna served as the inaugural Poet Laureate of Clark County from 2013-2017. A graduate of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, he founded the anti-fascist, anti-racist, pro-science LGBTQ+ friendly, all ages and uncensored Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic in 2004. His most recent book is Voracity (Lightship Press). christopherlunapoetry.com
WORKSHOP: The Work
Christopher will be leading a short generative poetry writing workshop he calls “The Work.” Example poems will be provided, along with a variety of prompts. Participants will be invited to complete one or more timed writing exercises and we will conclude a short period of sharing our drafts.
Ellen Waterston
Award-winning poet and author Ellen Waterston has dedicated herself to writing and advocating for the literary arts in the high desert region of Oregon, all the while continuing to write poetry and nonfiction works that have evolved into essential reading about Oregon and the West. She has published four poetry and five literary nonfiction titles, including, most recently, We Could Die Doing This (2024) and Walking the High Desert (2020). She is the founder of the Writing Ranch and of the annual Waterston Desert Writing Prize. 2024 was a banner year for Waterston who, that year, received Soapstone’s Bread and Roses Award, Literary Arts’ Stewart H. Holbrook Award, and was named the eleventh Poet Laureate of Oregon. writingranch.com
KEYNOTE ADDRESS: Lost in Place
What is the ballast to your helium? What allows you, as a writer, to be at once temperate and tempestuous, respecting or pushing boundaries, tuned in and out, judicious and daring, seasoned and naive? For Oregon Poet Laureate Ellen Waterston, the high desert figures into her answer. Incorporating anecdotes, readings and prompts, Waterston will illustrate how dynamic and frustrating and generous and intrusive a relationship with place can be and, like most relationships, among our best teachers.
Terroir Creative Writing Festival 